Sen. Childers` Bill Cost County $437,000

August 2, 1989|By JAMES H. TOLPIN, Staff Writer

The sponsor of a law that cost Palm Beach County`s Public Health Unit $437,000 a year in fees was West Palm Beach`s Sen. Don Childers, who said he was unaware that his bill resulted in a loss to the county.

``This is the first time I`m aware of a county losing any fees as a result of this legislation,`` said Childers, after being told of the 1988 bill`s effect on Palm Beach County.

Although the law primarily had to do with teaching proper food-handling techniques, it also prohibited counties from collecting annual fees from restaurants. The fees pay for restaurant inspections.

Because only the state can collect the fees now, Palm Beach County is out the $437,000 it expected to collect.

The story of how this law got passed in the 1988 state legislative session is full of irony. And not just because Childers attached his name to a bill that took money from his own county`s pocket.

As an arm of the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, the county`s health unit was working at cross purposes with its parent agency.

While HRS in Tallahassee lobbied for passage of the bill, the health unit in Palm Beach County fought to kill it.

The backdrop for passage of the bill was the chaos and feverish lobbying typical of the final day and final minutes of the legislative session.

``There was a lot of confusion going on,`` said Childers, a Democrat and a state senator since 1974.

Bill Broughton, Palm Beach County`s chief lobbyist, said Childers was set up to take the fall by supporters of the governor and the Florida Restaurant Association, which wanted to limit the amount of fees restaurants had to pay.

Childers did not realize that the bill would hurt counties, and when he found out, he tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent the bill`s passage, Broughton said.

``We appreciated what he tried to do. He had been set up. He didn`t realize it. And he tried to correct it,`` Broughton said.

He said he and a lobbyist from the Florida Association of Counties teamed up against the bill and told Childers why it needed to be killed.

For Palm Beach County, the bill meant a loss of money. For the Association of Counties, the bill meant a loss of every county`s authority to levy a fee.

Childers remembers events happening differently.

``I don`t think anybody had any idea what impact the bill would have,`` he said. ``I don`t recall anybody ever saying we were going to lose $400,000. If I had had a figure of $400,000, I would have pulled the bill.``

A former lobbyist for HRS said he and a lobbyist from the Governor`s Office pressed Childers to pass the bill, telling him that the state`s increase in fees would offset any loss to the counties.

For most counties, that was true. But for Palm Beach County, whose fees were the highest in the state, there would be a loss of revenue.

The HRS lobbyist, Marty Ryall, said he was speaking to Childers about counties generally and did not know at that time how much Palm Beach County would lose.

But the Florida Restaurant Association, the industry lobby, knew how much Palm Beach County would lose. The association had conducted a study of fees charged by counties throughout the state.

``Palm Beach County was extreme (in its level of fees),`` said Manny Mighdoll, the association`s executive vice president.

In the end, the bill passed overwhelmingly because of its principal component, a requirement that restaurant managers receive training in food- handling, Mighdoll said.

The training component in the bill was the end product of the bill`s transformation.

In its original state, Childers` bill was a response to the unsubstantiated fear that AIDS could be passed to restaurant customers by food handlers infected with the fatal disease.

The idea was to test all food handlers for diseases and license them.

But HRS decided that most cases of restaurant customers becoming ill stemmed not from diseased food handlers but rather from improper food preparation.

So, with HRS pushing, the bill metamorphosed. The testing of employees for diseases was dropped, and the training of managers was substituted.